however imperfectly. Think, then, how great must be the joy of a heart which lives wholly in love! And how perfect would be the condition of the world, were all the individuals united, as members of one harmonious, collective body, by the spirit of universal love! To write this law upon your hearts; to overcome your enmity by gentleness and goodness; to dispel ignorance by knowledge; to conquer death, and wrest his terrors from him, and to exhibit my own nature, character, and manner of life, in such distinctness and accuracy before you, that you may see me, face to face, and know your Father, I came down from heaven, and took that form which you rejected and slew. You know me now, for a feeling God, having tenderness and pity; afflicted with you in all your griefs, and participating in all your joys. My nature is like yours; for I formed you in my own image, and have wedded you to me. If there were not this congeniality between us, how could I expect your love? For a rational, voluntary, and sensitive soul needs one like itself, to cling to in uniting tenderness. Forasmuch, therefore, as I saw proper, for benevolent and wise purposes, to clothe you with flesh and blood, I also took part of the same, that through death, I might destroy him who had the power of death, and by the manifest exhibition of myself, as touched by the feeling of your infirmities, might be a fitting high priest to cleanse and sanctify you. And fear not to come to me, although you have no gift to offer, which you may think worthy the God of heaven. For to remove that wrong impression on the minds of men, was also one object of my coming. It is in the hearts of all finite beings, who see not the end from the beginning, to seek to satisfy divine justice, by some gift, or burnt offering; some thousands of rams, or rivers of oil. Nay, they will give their first-born for their transgression, and slay the fruit of their body for the sins of their soul,* under the mistaken notion that God can be appeased by bribes, or the sacrifices of human or brute victims. But put far away from you that thought. Is not every beast of the forest already mine, and the cattle, and the fowls, and every beast of the field? If I were hungry, would I tell you? For the world is mine, and the fulness thereof.t Offer, therefore, the calves of your lips,t viz: repentance, love, thanksgiving, and obedience to this example, which I have set you, in my own person. You can give me

* Mic. vi. 6-9.

† Psalm 1. 8-15.

Hos. xiv. 2.

nothing; but, on the contrary, behold, I give myself for you. See here, the Lamb of God slain for the sins of the whole world. By the very fact of your coming to this sacrifice, and acknowledging it as your atonement, you confess, at once your own bloodguiltiness; your own poverty, ruin, and nothingness; the all-sufficiency of the free grace and redeeming love of your heavenly Father, and your pledge, by faith in him, to lead a new life, to put away the sins which pierced and crucified the God of heaven, and to follow your Lord, through life and in death. And, therefore it is, that God has ordained Himself in His body, as the Paschal Lamb, without the shedding of whose blood, no remission of sins can be had for hereby, only, can the Lord "be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus."*

Such is the doctrine of the blessed atonement, taught in the Scriptures of truth; but this is essentially different from the corrupt doctrine afterwards declared by the usurping and apostate clergy, in the Constantine period, when the plague of blood was poured out upon men.

When Ezekiel was brought from the river of Chebar, in the visions of God, to Jerusalem,† and taken into the temple, he was shewn "a hole in the wall," and "a door," through which he was bid to enter, that he might see the wicked abominations which men committed in the secret recess. So he went in, and beheld "every form of creeping things, and abominable beasts, and all the idols of the house of Israel, portrayed upon the wall round about." There, also, stood men "at the door of the temple of the Lord, between the porch and the altar, with their backs towards the temple of the Lord, and their faces towards the east, and they worshipped the sun toward the east."

Let us do as Ezekiel did. Let us enter by the secret door, into the Esoteric mysteries of the churches, and see what creeping things are painted there, in the inside of their creeds and temples, and whether the men do not stand with their backs to the Lord, and their faces to their idols. And because Christ is the only door to the true church, and is also the professed door of the false churches, who betray him with a kiss, and because no one has power to detect the signs, and wonders, or miracles of Anti-Christ, but he who is truly engrafted on the knowledge and love of God, † Ezek. ch. viii.

*Rom. iii. 26.

by faith in our Lord, we will dig into the wall of Gentile theology, and go in by the door of their profession in Christ. For be it never forgotten that Christ is the sure and infallible test to detect and reveal the inmost thoughts of our hearts;* He is "a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offence to them which stumble at the word, being disobedient;" but unto those who believe, he is precious,† and the only foundation of deliverance. As our hearts are, with regard to Christ, so are our hearts with regard to holiness and God, and our faith in Him is the sign by which churches are thrown down or built up, and neither can a true nor a false faith be concealed, any more than ointment in the hand, which betrays itself.‡

All the professing Christian churches now in existence, of whatever denomination, and by whatever name called, so far as my knowledge of them extends, may be divided into two great classes: 1st. Those which believe that Christ had but one soul, and that that soul was a created soul.

2nd. Those which believe that Christ had two souls, viz: one of them the eternal God, and the other a created soul.

The believers in the first-named doctrine, may be all comprehended under the appellation of Unitarians, whether they be Arians, Semi-Arians, or Socinians. And the members of the second class, I shall comprehend under the general term of Trinitarians, whether they be believers in a Trinity of actual persons, or only in a Trinity of relations, principles, or actions.

Unitarians assert that Christ had but one soul, and that that soul was a created soul. They do not believe that Christ is two, any more than they believe that God is three; but, on the contrary, they believe in the doctrine of God's unity, and in the doctrine of Christ's unity. They challenge a single text to be produced, in all the Bible, to prove either that God is three beings, or that Christ is two beings. The Rev. Mr. Channing's words are these: "We believe that Jesus is one mind, one soul, one being, as truly one as we are, and equally distinct from the one God. We complain of the doctrine of the Trinity, that, not satisfied with making God three beings, it makes Jesus Christ two beings, and thus introduces infinite confusion into our conceptions of His character. This corruption of Christianity, alike repugnant to common sense and to the general strain of Scripture, is a remarkable proof of the power + Prov. xxvii. 16.

*Luke ii. 34, 35.

1 Pet. ii. 7, 8.

of a false philosophy in disfiguring the simple truth of Jesus. According to this doctrine, Jesus Christ, instead of being one mind, one conscious, intelligent principle, whom we can understand, consists of two souls, two minds: the one divine, the other human; the one weak, the other almighty; the one ignorant, the other omniscient. Now, we maintain that this is to make Christ two beings. To denominate Him one person, one being, and yet to suppose Him made up of two minds, infinitely different from each other, is to abuse and confound language, and to throw darkness over all our conceptions of intelligent natures. According to the common doctrine, each of these two minds in Christ, has its own consciousness, its own will, its own perceptions. They have, in fact, no common properties. The divine mind feels none of the wants and sorrows of the human, and the human is infinitely removed from the perfection and happiness of the divine. Can you conceive of two beings in the universe more distinct? We have always thought that one person was constituted and distinguished by one consciousness. The doctrine that one and the same person, should have two consciousnesses, two wills, two souls, infinitely different from each other, this we think an enormous tax on human credulity."*

Unitarians, however, do not deny that there are texts of Scripture, in which Christ is called God, and also a class of passages in which divine properties are said to be ascribed to Him. But they answer: "It is one of the most established and obvious principles of criticism, that language is to be explained according to the known properties of the subject to which it is applied." A few sentences lower down, in the same discourse from which I am quoting, Mr. Channing says: "It is our duty to explain such texts by the rule which we apply to other texts, in which human beings are called gods, and are said to be partakers of the divine nature, to know and possess all things, and to be filled with all God's fulness." From which, it appears that Unitarians resolve all such texts into a figure of speech, on the same principle as they resolve into the figure of speech, called by theologians anthropopathy, all the scriptural texts which impute to the Supreme Being the feelings, sentiments, and affections of a holy man.

*Discourse at the ordination of the Rev. Jared Sparks, Baltimore, 1819, by the Rev. William E. Channing.

† Vide same discourse, by Channing.

In many respects, I very greatly admire Mr. Channing. He was a man of great strength of mind and amiableness, and I earnestly recommend all his works to the candid study of every free inquirer. The last discourse which I believe he ever delivered, that on the anniversary of the abolition of slavery in the West Indies, convinced me of our duty to consider the question of slavery, as connected with our federal constitution, in a manner very different from any which I had before conceived. My feelings towards his memory are of the highest respect and kindness, and yet, notwithstanding my very great regard for him, I must controvert his opinions on the doctrine of the divinity of our Saviour, with the same unreserved freedom with which he himself would have acted, in sustaining his principles.

There is only one God, and one Christ. In this, the Unitarians are right. But they are totally wrong in denying that that one Christ is the one God. Mr. Channing is, however, correct in alleging that there is not "a book which demands a more frequent exercise of reason, than the Bible." It is a revelation of God to man, and therefore it is addressed to all the faculties, sentiments, and instincts which God has implanted in man. For all these faculties, sentiments, and instincts, are created with the express purpose that we may know and glorify God. They are the avenues through which we behold and approach God, and not one of them is given to us in vain. The Scriptures present objects, motives, and incitements to each power of our mind. We are constantly called upon to consider, to compare, to judge, to choose, to love, to reject, to abhor, and destroy, or to cherish, acquire, and accumulate. The word of the Lord furnishes food and refreshment to our souls, with no less variety and abundance than the physical creation of the Lord does to our bodies. All men do not equally profit by the same kind of physical aliment; neither do all spirits, by the same kind of parable, type, metaphor, or argument. Hence the natural creation abounds with riches and magnificence, that every man may rejoice, and with, at least, equal benevolence and wisdom, the Scriptures of God speak to every mind with a variety of instruction suited to our natures. But from the first chapter of Genesis to the last of Revelation, the same truth is taught, viz: that we are made in God's image; that we are like God, and that, therefore, God is like us; that He is our Father, our